Skating on the Canal

The last few winters haven't been as long as they used to be, but no one is describing Ottawa's winter as warm yet.
About half of the 8 km. length of the canal skateway is open. As it worked out
I skated it three times yesterday.  In the morning for fun, in the afternoon for world wide sketchcrawl 34 and then last night to accompany my son home from downtown.  I must say by then my new skates were chaffing a bit.

I didn't have any companions for the sketchcrawl, except for the 4000 or so people out enjoying the ice.  Its always a fun experience  with all the colourfulclothing, variety of skates and complete range of ages.  I did a sketch of Patterson Creek last summer and realized how unique it must seem in winter to my viewers from warmer countries.  The little building has washrooms and a place to change into your skates.  We just leave our shoes under the benches and I have never heard of anyone losing them.  Access to the actual canal is under the little arched bridge where you have the choice to skate north all the way downtown, or south to Dow's Lake. There are several other change huts along the canal, but many people just use benches out on the open ice, or sit on the snow like the guy in the upper sketch.  

Summer sketch -  http://johnssketchjournal.blogspot.com/2011/06/patterson-creek.html

World Wide Sketchcrawl

October 15th was 33rd World  Wide Sketchcrawl day.  http://www.sketchcrawl.com/    All over the world people get together to go sketching.  Some cities, like Seattle have groups as large as 40 people.  Here in Ottawa there were only 2 of us, but I think we'll find some company for next time.

It was fun to meet another USK member, Greg Manley, and share observations.  Greg is an architect and painter.  His work can be seen at www.manleyart.com .  We met at the War Museum and even though the skies were threatening walked over to the old mill by Victoria Island.  There are some old dams and generating stations, even vestiges of the the logging industry such as log flumes in this area.

We did several sketches and our last location was on the roof of the War Museum.  It turns out Greg had been the site architect for the construction of this building, but hadn't been back for several years.  The view of the Ottawa skyline from here is quite 'central park', with the long grass on the Museum's green roof in the foreground.

A succesful day - did some sketching, didn't get rained on and made a friend.